Putting Brissie talent on map

A HIGHGATE Hill couple are out to change the face of Brisbane’s film industry.

Joe Bauer, 23, and Rita Artmann, 26, have starred in, filmed and produced a television series called The Void, which airs on 31Digital TV at 9.30pm on Wednesdays from next week.

Ms Artmann said they hoped to shine a light on some of the talented actors, artists, musicians and filmmakers who called Brisbane home.

“We’ve got so much talent and they never get a job here,” she said.

“So we wanted to do something for the community. That’s our mission statement: to bring work to Brisbane to give an opportunity to all those people that are so fantastic but are struggling to get seen and recognised.”

The self-funded series is a “skitcom” that tells the story of “a group of unappreciated young filmmakers” who have been trapped into making a film for 12 years.

The project is the second for the creative couple. Their 2009 feature film The Killage has been doing the rounds of international film festivals.

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The Void – Beyond explanation?

“The Void” is a six-episode comedy series that that had its premiere on Digital31 (channel 44), Brisbane’s community television station, in late October, 2011. The show is a “skit-com” about a group of unappreciated young filmmakers trapped by contract on a never-ending (12 years and counting) feature film project called “The Void”, under the direction of a woeful, yet inexplicably pretentious twat with a seemingly limitless supply of funding.

The stories revolve around the five underlings – Lu, the drama queen lead actress; Fex, the nerdy editor/visual effects guru; Milly, the down-trodden sound recordist; Ed, the sarcastic camera operator/grip; and Wilton, the brown-nosing gopher. In their endless struggles to appease the constantly-shifting, often illogical whims of Gustaf, their fascist director, they find themselves drifting in and out of tangential fantasies, intertextual parodies and parallel universes… all in the name of independent filmmaking.

The Void was conceived in early 2011 by creators Rita Artmann and Joe Bauer, who also star as Lu and Fex, respectively.